Meet Medusa, Bellflower’s Flame-Throwing, Post-Apocalyptic Car

AUSTIN, Texas — Indie directors often characterize their films as meticulously crafted, completely original labors of love. Filmmaker Evan Glodell actually has two: His apocalyptic revenge epic, Bellflower, and the flame-throwing '72 Buick Skylark he custom-built for the film.

After a well-received screening at Sundance last January, Glodell wheeled both of his loves into Austin for the South by Southwest film festival. A mechanically inclined tinkerer with a penchant for mischief, Glodell and a small group of friends took it upon themselves to outfit the ride — lovingly known as Medusa — with fully functional tech, including dash-mounted surveillance cameras, an integrated smoke-screen generator and lever-toggled suspension.

"We looked around forever trying to find the right car, but we didn't have that much money," said Glodell over the throaty growl of Medusa's engine. "A stock Skylark showed up on Craigslist in Oxnard, California, for $2,800, so we started there."

Three years, 30,000 volts and three engine blowouts later, Glodell's homegrown doomsday machine finally matched the Mad Max-ian spec his script called for. Here's an up close and personal tour of Glodell's road-raging custom ride.

Bellflower director Glodell has been hacking machinery together since childhood. "I had a full-scale obsession with high-voltage machines as a kid," he said. "I spent a lot of time building Tesla coils, electrical shockers and anything that would make huge sparks."

Engine Block

Medusa's 455 Chevy engine is one of the many parts of the car that had to be repeatedly overhauled due to the rigors of filming. Engine blowouts over the course of shooting delayed Bellflower's production as much as eight months.

Door

Bellflower's shoestring budget meant that many of Medusa's nonessential parts — like the inside driver's panel — were kept lovingly spartan and a little worse for wear.

Igniter

At full tilt, Medusa's rear-exhaust flamethrowers producing show-stopping pillars of fire. A 2,000-psi pump system sprays gasoline into the exhaust system to feed the flames.

Ignition System

Getting the flamethrower's electric igniters to play nice was the trickiest part of building Medusa. "All the gasoline we were shooting out kept extinguishing the first few igniters we tried," said Glodell. "At one point we had a more elaborate system with two mounted propane torches, but they'd send out a huge cloud of gas whenever they'd misfire."

Dashboard Controls

Glodell envisioned Medusa's dashboard (above) as a fully functional, true to life control panel for the vehicle's numerous capabilities. Everything from the car's flamethrower to the rear suspension was meticulously wired to be controlled from this hub.

Surveillance Monitor

A dash-mounted display can receive a charmingly old-school black-and-white video feed from cameras mounted on the car.

Smoke Screen

Glodell throws Medusa into a fishtailing doughnut in an abandoned lot just outside downtown Austin. To ensure dramatically billowing burnouts, he installed a nozzle system that sprays bleach onto the rear tires to soften the rubber.

Trunk

The guts of Medusa's trunk hide the muscle behind the flame-throwing mechanism: Two 15,000-volt transformers, a proprietary gas tank, a fuel pump and a car battery to run the whole system. The occasional trunk fire proved to be a bit of a problem for Bellflower's four-wheeled star.